Author: manuscrypts

  • False Memories

    I read this interesting post titled ‘Time traveler‘, thanks to a Reader share. (Mo?) Its about memories not being the same for two people, even if they’re part of the same events in life. So, who’s to say which memory/recollection is real and which is not? “The past is just a reconstruction of our minds, then.”

    I came across a similar thought in ‘Lunatic in My Head’, where a twenty-something guy plays slides from two decades back. Though he’s present in the slides, he has no memories of them, and he felt that it was unfair that his parents should possess those memories, but he doesn’t, even though he was present in the slides. He is forced to rely on his parents’ recollections, but sometimes rebels by creating stories and arguing with them.

    Maybe these reconstructions of the mind are based on an identity we have created for ourselves at that particular point in time – in the present. So all events, people, concepts, understandings are seen through that prism? And as time moves on, the prisms change too, like some sort of kaleidoscope, where every memory gets rearranged in context, based on our changing perceptions, notions and views.

    And not all the photos and posts and tweets and videos can ever be free of a prism, some prism. Maybe we change our own memories too.

    until next time, prism break.

  • Ente Keralam

    This review first appeared in Bangalore Mirror, and has, as usual been modified to fit the blog’s ahem editorial guidelines. 🙂

    So, after a lot of tapas, divinity has finally been attained. In other words, what used to be Zara Tapas Bar on Ulsoor Road is now a representative of God’s Own Country – Ente Keralam, which translates to ‘My Kerala’. Here’s a map to get you there. This is the road that joins Dickenson Road to the gurudwara. I think access to it from the gurudwara side is closed temporarily, since one of the government agencies have received reports of some ancient buried treasure. Massive digging in process, but it’s not really a spoilsport.

    ‘Ente Keralam’ tries to capture the varied cuisines of Kerala – from Thiruvananthapuram to Thalassery, but despite a great setting and a compact menu that looks good on paper, the food came perilously close to being labelled Keralame. Here’s the menu.

    The ambiance is probably the best thing about the restaurant. The décor includes a few traditional vessels – para, uruli, they have Malayalam books and magazines at the Reception, there’s a miniature Chinese fishing net on the table (Cochin is famous for its kind) and I saw an elephant’s nettipattam too! What works even better is the music – hits from the 80s, which took us all on a nostalgia trip.

    We started with Keraleeyam, (coconut drink) and the Sambharam (butter milk) . Both were extremely good, particularly the latter, which turned out to be a major hit.  We also tried a Thengappal soup (Chicken). Though it justified the name (coconut milk), it was only just above average. Among the starters, the Erachi cutlet (beef) was reasonably good. But the other three were, well, non starters. The Kozhi Kurumulakittathu was stingy on pepper and was particularly insipid. The Malabar Konju Porichathu (prawn) and the Vazhapoo (raw banana) cutlets were only just okay. Since the veg and non veg cutlets looked similar, we had some minor drama as the sole vegetarian in the group was ‘encouraged’ to try beef.

    In the main course, the appams were fluffy and would’ve been perfect if they had held back a bit on the sweetness. The Chicken Stew complemented it well. The Alleppey Vegetable Curry was a tangy marvel, but the best dish was the Meen Pattichathu (fish), which did a lot to salvage the regular combination  – with Kappa Vevichathu. (tapioca)   The Kappa turned out to be mushy and almost spoiled the combination. The Beef Thenga varutharacha curry was an outright disaster. The Thalassery biriyani, of which much was expected, chickened out and even the unique date pickle couldn’t save it. The Paal Ada Payasam was watery and its sugar kick overcompensated.

    The service is quite good, and very prompt. Except for the cutlet fiasco, we had nothing to complain about, and even though we only ordered after we finished each set, they managed to get the next course on the table pretty fast.

    A meal for two would cost you about Rs.1000, and you could get quite a fill with that.  I’d recommend that you drop in if you want to try some Malayali cuisine that’s not commonly found in menus. And unless you have a Malayali in your group, practise saying Kurumulakittathu a few times before visiting. Trust me, it will help. 😉

    Ente Keralam, No: 1/3, Ulsoor Road, Bangalore – 560008. Ph: 080-32421002

    PS: This review was extra special because I was meeting a few friends after more than 7 years. To say that we had an absolute blast would be an understatement. :))

  • The crowd in my head

    Two wonderful posts I read a while back – one which I could completely identify with, and the other, such a complete antithesis of what I do that it was almost like a mirror I was forced to look into- but something I could utterly understand.

    Amit Varma’s ‘Society, You Crazy Breed‘, which is about many inter-related things -the need to escape the clutter, even of our own thoughts, the want of validation and acceptance, the human interaction that will take us away from “the terror of [our] own singular thoughts.” (from) It also talks about debate on the internet, but while that makes a large part of the ‘clutter’, especially the micro-debates, the ‘must comment’ social obligation is something I’ve written about earlier, so I was more interested in the first part.

    I used to absolutely love solitude earlier, and it was easier to access too. But now what’s easily more accessible is a crowd. It slowly becomes a sort of addiction, despite me wanting to stay away. Its no longer easy to be objective enough to separate a want from a need, and its quite easy to fool the self. When one has never been the particularly confident type and has barely gotten out of a constant validation requirement, its particularly difficult. An RT on Twitter is easy validation, and as I’ve said before, the vicarious ‘living’ is easy and fun. Its good to be connected, and be a carefully moulded version of ourselves that is acceptable to those we would like to be connected to. The trick, of course, is to be a version  true to our own selves, something we are comfortable with, in solitude, or in a crowd. But that’s not easy.

    That brings me to the second post, “One for the time capsule” wonderfully written by The Restless Quill, about living life on one’s own terms, fighting the battles inside, the arguments outside, and ‘inhabiting a life’, which can create a ‘light-band of memories’. Chances are, choices such as those, would be made with minimum validation. Its also, I think, a lot to do with confidence and an understanding that perhaps comes from listening to oneself, in solitude.

    Its easy to guess which post I could identify with, and which one is the anti-thesis. There are times when my destiny stared at me in the face, and I looked away furtively, as though looking would mean acknowledging, and then accepting. I can dimly sense these. The ability to make those ‘difficult’ choices and keep walking, joyous in the consciousness of what one has learned and the comfortable understanding of what one has lost out on, it must be liberating. I have a feeling, and unfortunately, a feeling only, that it must really be wonderful.

    until next time, a crowdsourced time capsule

  • Chesapeake

    James A Michener

    From 1583 to 1978 the saga rolls, tracking the lives of individuals, their families, the society they live in, and most importantly the place where all of this happens. Chesapeake is as much about a way of life, as it is about the place and its people.

    The book is typical Michener, and uses individual stories across generations to show the way a place and its society has evolved. Even as each generation’s story is read, it is difficult to realise the passage of time, since sometimes the changes are too subtle to be noticed.

    As many of the place’s characteristics remain unchanged, despite human efforts, it becomes easier to acknowledge the transience of man, and the things he builds, not just boats, buildings etc, but even the constructs of the society he lives in.

    The book captures the plight of the Indians who were the original inhabitants of the area, the arrival of the first conquerors, the American war of Independence, the slave trade, the Civil War, World War 2, Watergate, some of them in the foreground, and some in the background, as the fortunes of individuals and families rise and fall.

    Humans, nature, and human nature – a good mix. 🙂

  • All I have to do is dream…

    Yes. Quite liked the movie – Inception. Mostly because I found the concept  (dream incubation, lucid dreaming) interesting and because it forced me to pay attention. Sometimes, movies like that can be refreshing. Of course, it helped that the visuals were very watchable too, and the last shot added to the charm.

    For those who haven’t seen the movie, not to worry, the post only refers to it in terms of concept. At a very basic level, its about planting an idea (Inception) inside a person’s head. Only, he shouldn’t know it was planted by someone else, he should think it’s his idea.  In a world where a lot of people anyway falsely claim an idea as their own, you might wonder why this is interesting, but  ignore that for now. 🙂 Meanwhile, since the person needs to think its his idea, a basic version of the idea is planted in a dream state, in the subconscious.

    Like the movie maker has said about the end, its whatever you want it to be, so here goes. The other reason I liked the movie was because of the ‘life subtext” – the part that makes comparisons to The Matrix inevitable. I thought many acts of ‘Inception’ happen to us too, over a period of time – sometimes done by others, sometimes by ourselves – conditioning. And since we don’t really contemplate why we choose to do a certain thing/in a certain way, we end up thinking that what we’re doing is what we really want.

    Half my life
    Is in books’ written pages
    Lived and learned from fools and
    From sages
    You know it’s true
    All the things come back to you

    And just like how in the movie, the ‘projections’ (things and people used by a dream-architect to populate the dream world) turn hostile when the person detects an external presence in their sub conscious, in life, the problem starts when we suddenly realise the existence of the conditioning, and realise that perhaps, much time has been spent on chasing an ‘inception’.

    Every time that I look in the mirror
    All these lines on my face getting clearer
    The past is gone
    It went by, like dusk to dawn

    And yet, some would say that their lives have been made better by pursuing that one idea. So how do we really know? In the movie, the people who carry out ‘inception’ and the lower forms of the art (extraction) have a totem that helps them distinguish dreams from reality. I wonder if we have something comparable, but then, I wonder, if life would be as interesting as it is if I did have a spinning top or a rolling dice to give me a better grip on reality. 🙂

    until next time, deception 🙂

    Lyrics: Dream On, Aerosmith.